


Fury's Fabulous Fantasies

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 1930s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Circus, Fluff and Angst, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 04:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7875724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the late ’30s, and men are out of work again, and Father La Guardia’s determined to shove all the queers right out of New York, just like Bucky's father wants the queers out of his house. Steve’s determined to stick out his jaw and get it broken, and Bucky’s not sure <em>what</em> to do. Then the circus comes through, heading west, and maybe there are a few places left in this world for a boy like Bucky, and a crimson-lipped tornado named Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The circus! I came up with the original idea for this rambling for a meme a long, long time ago, and someone asked for a fic. The follow up chapter is because someone (playing on my love affair with minor female characters in Steve and Bucky's childhood) asked for Becky's perspective on this whole thing.
> 
> Steve is a little different in this fic, though he's very true to the area in Brooklyn in the 1930s where he might have lived. In my head, he looks a lot like [here](https://toli-a.tumblr.com/post/99407281398/fashioningidentity-the-gay-deceiver).

“It would just be for a few weeks,” Bucky begged, his sisters peering around the doorway from the bedroom, his Ma scrubbing at her cast iron pan over the edge of the sink. He didn’t look at his father, sitting in the unvarnished wooden chair, shoveling the last of the week’s meat into his mouth. “He can’t afford to stay at their old place, not with the rent due tomorrow.”

“I’m not having that boy in this house,” Mr. Barnes declared, slamming his fork down against his plate. Bucky set his jaw and didn’t flinch.

“You’ve had him in this house before,” he pointed out, watching his mother’s hands scrub over the same rusty spot, back and forth, back and forth. “He ain’t gonna take up much more space than he ever did. We can share -”

“You ain’t sharing nothing with that boy!” Bucky’s father lumbered to his feet, the physique of a fat man grown thin. “Got arrested last month, didn’ he, an’ dressed like a fuckin’ flapper!”

“I sleep here,” Bucky retorted, scuffing his shoe against the floor. “And I was in that wagon, much as he was.” Though, even Bucky had to admit Stevie had made more of an impression. Bucky in his suit and suspenders hadn’t been half as eye-catching as Steve all dolled up in his best dress, with the heels he’d borrowed from Dora down the hall.

Bucky could feel his jaw clench, even before his father spoke. Bit his tongue, because Becca and the twins were listening, and Bucky loved his baby sisters more than he hated his Pops.

“I’ve had enough of your lip, son!” George shouted, breath redolent with beer when it gusted into Bucky’s face. “I won’t have a fairy sleep in my house!”

Bucky swallowed. Uncrossed his arms. Watched his Ma’s thin shoulders hunch down over her pan, and tried not to listen to the cry that she choked down. “All right,” he said, and didn’t turn to look at Becca where she’d peered out from the doorway. Didn’t want to see her sweet face twist in disgust. “Ain’t much I can do about that, I guess. But if you aren’t boarding fairies, then you probably aren’t taking queers in, either, so I guess I’d better go.”

“Bucky!” Becca screeched, but whatever she had intended to tell him petered away at a glance from their Pops.

“Bye, Ma,” Bucky whispered, because if he turned to look at his sister - his Irish twin, only eleven months younger and twice as smart – he wouldn’t be able to hold back the tears he had blinked away, or the fist he wanted to swing at George Barnes. He bent to kiss his mother and she shied away, dark hair falling out of her braid, brushing his cheek when she ducked her head.

“Get out, then,” Bucky’s father demanded, shoving his only son away away before Bucky could reach out for his mother, hanging onto her skirts and pleading for love like a little boy still in his shorts. “Go on. No call for your kind around here.”

* * *

Steve found him at the bar. Steve wasn’t dolled up, this time, just in his trousers and one of Bucky’s old shirts, hair slicked back and lips chapped instead of waxy and cherry red. He had known Bucky would talk to his parents, just didn’t know when – with Mrs. Rogers dead and the rent due, they were running out of options. With Mayor La Guardia pushing hard to close the queer bars down and toss them all in the workhouse, they were running out of spaces to be.

“Bucky! I’ve been looking for you for hours, Jesus, where’ve you been?”

The bartender – Lucy, her broad shoulders hidden under a blue silk wrap – winked at Steve and poured him a glass. The closer Stevie got, the deeper his frown grew. “Buck, you look like hell. What’s wrong? What happened? We knew your Pops wouldn’t want me around, didn’t we? Nothing to worry about, we’ll figure -”

“He doesn’t want me around, either,” Bucky interrupted, throwing back his whiskey and reaching for Steve’s. “No fairies in his place, he says, and no queers. Ma wouldn’t even look at me. They didn’t let Becca say good-bye.”

Steve went quiet, the space between them humming with the concern in his blue eyes. Then he tucked himself under Bucky’s arm, wedging his scrawny limbs in close until he could rub his cheek against Bucky’s, press the comfort of his cold nose and clammy hands against Bucky’s numb face.

“It’s gonna be okay, Buck. I promise. We’ll find something. Mrs. Klepper said I could sweep the floors, in the afternoons. Help cut hair, maybe.” Which still wouldn’t make them enough to pay rent on the Rogerses’ apartment, and anything that Mrs. Rogers had once saved had disappeared earlier that year into hospital bills and dashed hopes. “Becca knows her own mind, she’ll come ‘round to ours soon as she can, Buck. She’s better than that. Better than them.”

“Squad car!” somebody shouted, and the bar’s clientele stampeded toward the alley door, a few of the smarter ones ducking under the counter and headed for the basement to change. Lucy threw off her shawl and became Luke, smearing her lipstick onto a hand towel and throwing on a man’s shirt to hide her blouse.

Everyone ran but Steve, who stayed resolutely under Bucky’s arm, spinning to face the front with his jaw stuck out too far, his pretty hands curled into useless fists. “Stevie,” Bucky protested, but he already knew they’d be spending the night taking the wagon to the jail. If Steve kept taking on the cops, they’d be spending the next year on Riker’s Island.

Bucky couldn’t go home – he couldn’t go anywhere they didn’t want Steve, he admitted, sighing and dragging himself to his feet and into the fight. But Steve couldn’t go to the workhouse; it would kill him faster than tuberculosis had knocked Mrs. Rogers down and dragged her away, it would be hell on his fragile lungs and crooked spine.

They couldn’t stay put, that was for sure. But where was there to go, for a couple of queer boys in La Guardia’s New York?

* * *

The landlord had kicked them out that afternoon. He’d insisted on keeping the furniture – not that Steve and Bucky had any place to take it, but Steve had loved that damn dresser, climbed up the drawers as a kid to reach Mrs. Rogers’s lipstick and perfume.

Now they were wandering Brooklyn, searching for a place to spend the night. Someplace quiet enough for Bucky to get some sleep before heading to the docks and hoping for a day’s pay, and dry enough that Steve’s asthma wouldn’t kick up in the damp air.

“There.” Steve pointed with his free hand, the one that wasn’t linked with Bucky’s, tucked into the pocket of Bucky’s coat. It wasn’t cold enough for coats, yet, but it was wear his jacket or leave it behind. “That looks dry. And there are boards, to sleep on.”

Steve had always been overly optimistic. Also - “Stevie, doll, that’s a circus tent. It’s a circus. We can’t sleep there.”

“Why not? They aren’t selling tickets _now_ , are they? And it’s half packed, looks like. They’re probably loading it up onto the train tomorrow.” Steve smiled at Bucky, his lips quirked and his eyebrows raised in a challenge. It was the face he’d made years ago, the runt, smirking at Bucky and saying, _You gonna kiss me, Buck, or we gonna pretend that you don’t want to lick this color off my lips?_

“Fine,” Bucky grumbled, bending down to bite at Steve’s bottom lip. “But if they feed us to the lions, I’m blaming you.”

* * *

“We could feed them to the tigers,” a sultry, feminine voice suggested. Someone shone a lamp in Bucky’s face, waking him from a restless doze under the empty circus tent. “Meat is so expensive in New York.”

“Don’t be stupid,” a man replied, in a quick, familiar Manhattan patter. “That little one’s got no meat to spare. Only thing he’d be good for’s -”

Bucky rolled Steve off his chest, reversing their positions so that his body blanketed Steve’s, resting on his elbows so that he didn’t crush Steve’s ribs. “Don’t touch him,” Bucky growled, trying not to yawn through the words. It wouldn’t be the first time some asshole thought they knew what Steve was good for, lips too pretty for his own good.

“Oooh,” the woman by Bucky’s head whistled, her red hair tucked behind her ears. “We’ve got a feisty one. Maybe you could add him to your collection, Maria. Give him some whiskers and he’d blend right in.”

Steve, who had never once in their lives known when to shut up and stay put, shoved at Bucky’s chest and scowled sleepily. “Bucky looks terrible in whiskers,” he declared, as though Bucky could grow much more than a patchy mustache and a few scraggly hairs on his chin. “And it makes him itchy to kiss.”

The muscular, lazy-looking man leaning on the red-haired woman chuckled, which was all that prevented Bucky from dragging his idiotic lover away from the group of people who could kill them and not worry about witnesses. Or repercussions. Bucky’s family certainly wouldn’t mourn the loss.

“Nat says the same thing,” he told them, yawning and stretching in a vest but no shirt. “But I think she sees facial hair as best left to the bearded lady.”

“For the last time,” the first man that had spoken snapped, rubbing at his mustache and slight beard. “I am not a bearded lady! We run a circus, Barton, not a freak show.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” a new threat declared, a negro man striding up with a scowl and an eye patch that didn’t hide the edges of old, whitened scars. “I thought I paid you to work your magic with this tent, Stark, not to gawk like a meal ticket.”

“Meal tickets are the paying customers,” yet another man explained to them, though Bucky didn’t know why he bothered. This friendly, bespectacled man had a calm face, though, and the arm he let the dark-haired man sling over his shoulder convinced Bucky that they might not be planning to dump him and Steve in an alley, or in the river with cement shoes. “They’re harder to find, with Roosevelt’s depression.”

“Lucky we put on a good show, then,” the original woman said brusquely, glowering at all of them with suspicious brown eyes, slender arms folded. “Speaking of which, boys,” she turned to address Bucky and Steve, still sitting in the circle of carnies and blinking the sleep from their eyes. “We’re bound West on the morning train, so you’re going to have to find somewhere else to bunk.”

“She’s always like that,” the sharp man – Stark, the negro had said – whispered, as though confiding in Bucky and Steve. He didn’t appear to be in a hurry to do whatever his magic with the tent was, but Bucky knew lots of folks who wouldn’t be caught dead taking orders from a black man. “You should see her with the whip, right Bruce?”

Bruce sighed, but gazed at Stark like his glasses offered him some special insight into the man’s soul. “Tony, take Clint and start packing up. You’ll never convince Nick to keep them if Maria kills you.”

“Oh, no. No.” Maria shook her head, shouting the word at Stark when the black-haired, mustached man grumbled at Bruce’s imperturbable expression before grabbing the man with the vest and dragging him away, muttering something about wires and guy lines. “No, Sparks! We can’t barely afford to keep you, we aren’t taking in strays!”

“If Fury didn’t take in strays,” the small, fiery-haired woman asked Maria, “where would any of us be?”

Maria’s face tightened, but the women were distracted by Steve scrambling to his feet – not that it made him taller than any of the people staring at him, but Bucky knew that Steve preferred to face things on his feet, when he couldn’t dive into them head first. “We aren’t strays!” he insisted, beautiful blue eyes charged with indignation, his fists clenched: the way he always stood when he charged into a brawl. Queers saw Stevie under Bucky’s arm - rouge on his thin cheeks, dress cinched in around a waist that fit perfectly between Bucky’s hands – and foolishly assumed the slim boy was nothing more than a luscious, irresistible smile and easy relief. “We don’t need your charity!”

The negro man raised an eyebrow, and Bruce appeared politely skeptical. Maria snorted at them. “Um, Steve?” Bucky said softly, and didn’t wrap his arm around Steve’s waist like he wanted to do. Stevie might be his doll, but he hated being held back from a fight. “They found us sleeping rough in their circus. We _are_ strays.”

“Not an uncommon problem, around these parts,” the black man informed them. He extended a hand, and Bucky blinked at it. “I’m Nick Fury, and this is my circus.”

Steve shook first, his pale hand dwarfed in the man’s strong grip. “Steve Rogers,” he introduced them. “And this is Bucky, my fella.”

Long years of experience meant that Bucky could swallow his dismay at Stevie’s big mouth, nod politely and shake Fury’s hand. A negro, running a circus full of white folks. The world really had toppled over in ‘37, the year before. “Bucky Barnes,” he offered. “Like Steve said. Are you hiring?”

“Bucky!” Steve hissed, but Bucky didn’t look away from Fury, let the negro stare piercingly through him, measure him from unwashed hair to scuffed and worn shoes.

“We already have a good show,” Fury said, and Maria’s hackles visibly went down. “Maria has the cats. Natasha and Barton work the high wire and trapeze. Stark does something with lights, and works the town.”

“What does he do?” Bucky asked, gesturing at Bruce, curious about what a quiet, greying man was doing amongst the flash of the other carnies.

Bruce coughed, and scuffed his shoe into the hard-packed dirt. Fury’s lips pursed. “He helps Tony,” the circus owner said shortly, and Bucky wondered where he’d misstepped.

“I work outside,” Bruce told them, shrugging. “Men will lay down a lot of money, on a fight. And I don’t lose.”

“Never?” breathed Steve, clearly enraptured by the idea of a slight, older man knocking out all comers. Steve knew how it felt, to be underestimated and dismissed.

“Never,” Bruce said, but he didn’t sound half as pleased as Steve.

“So what can you do?” Maria questioned them, arms akimbo. “Acrobatics? Magic tricks? Swallow swords? Breathe fire?”

“I can draw,” Steve shot back, apparently forgetting that joining a _circus_ hadn’t been his idea. “Posters, signs, whatever you need. I can wear a dress better than you wear those trousers, and I can work a crowd.” That was true, though Bucky wasn’t sure they ought to be advertising that particular skill. Steve had learned from the best queens in Brooklyn. “I can do a lot more,” Steve smirked, “but nothing a dame would appreciate.” He leaned back against Bucky as he spoke, though; Steve could crook his finger and hook a man with ease, but he never left Bucky’s side.

“We could use an artist!” Tony hollered down from the top of the tent, where Barton was either dismantling the tightrope or playing Tarzan. “And I could use help getting the meal tickets to the tent.”

“Fine.” Maria still didn’t look very happy, but she shrugged in concession. “You’re too scrawny to eat much anyway. Less than my babies, at least. But what about your _fella?_ Can he do anything for us, or is he just the other half of your private double act?”

Maria was lucky that Bucky didn’t hit women, because he was the only thing preventing Stevie from socking her in the nose. She had a point, he admitted, capturing Steve’s fists in his hands and burying his face in Steve’s blond hair. He didn’t have very many skills – he could unload a ship without losing a crate, and read better than most of the other kids at St. Margaret’s, but that barely paid his way in New York, much less in Brooklyn. If the circus took Steve, it would be a steady income and a safe place. The carnies might be freaks, but they seemed like they defended their own. Bucky could sleep rough and get by, long as he didn’t have to worry about Steve.

“He can juggle,” Steve answered, when it became obvious that Bucky wasn’t going to. “He can juggle anything – baseballs, soda bottles, my Ma’s kitchen knives.” Maria wrinkled her nose, but Fury’s single eye looked interested. “And he never misses, if he’s throwing something.”

“Really?” Barton tumbled off a nearby platform and landed neatly on Bucky’s right. “I never miss, either! I’ve been begging Nick to show off, but he doesn’t think one schmuck hitting a target will draw a crowd. Still, if we made it a double act, and we tossed in juggling, then -”

“Can you tumble?” Natasha cut in, and it took Bucky a moment to realize she was asking him. “You’re the right size,” she said, without giving him a chance to answer. “And you’re quick – spun right over, when you thought we wanted to kill your steady. I bet I could teach him the floor acrobatics Clint can’t do,” she decided, announcing the last part to Fury.

Nick Fury hummed, examining Bucky and Steve with a weighted, silent gaze. Steve straightened up, but he didn’t pull away from Bucky’s tight embrace. “It’s both of us or nothing,” he promised, and long experience meant Bucky knew better than to protest Steve’s idiotic declarations.

“We’d gathered that,” Maria informed them, then waved a hand at her boss. “C’mon, Nick, save your ringmaster drama for the road. We all know they’ll be on the train with us, and the sooner we put them to work, the faster we’re out of this godforsaken town.”

“Brooklyn isn’t -”

“Welcome to the circus!” Stark called across the tent, interrupting Steve’s attempt to defend their home town. “Um, Bruce, can you untangle me before Clint trips the power and electrocutes me?”

Bruce rubbed his temples and shook his head tiredly, but the fond expression on his face indicated that Stark ensnared himself in wires on a regular basis. “It’s good to have you,” he told them, shaking their hands before jogging off to save Stark.

“We start training as soon as the tent is down,” Nat commanded, lifting her chin defensively as if she expected Bucky to disagree. Luckily, Bucky had spent his whole life being ordered around by a pint-sized dynamo in lipstick, and so was smart enough to nod and acquiesce.

“Can you juggle on a train?” Barton wondered, even as Nat pulled him toward the half-rigged trapezes. “We should work on ideas for a routine. Hey, if we design targets, can Steve paint them? Steve, can you paint old boards? I have some, if Maria’s giant pussy hasn’t used them for scratching posts.”

“My pussy could swallow you whole,” Maria retorted, with an amused sneer. “I’m going to go check on the girls, get them breakfast before we hit the road.” She raised an eyebrow at Steve. “I’ve got a few dresses we could cut down for you, if you’re any good with a needle, Rogers,” she said, and even Steve wasn’t too thick-headed to see a peace offering when it was tossed his way.

“Plenty good,” he agreed, and tilted his head back so that he could look at Bucky, eyes lit with excitement that he hadn’t had since before Mrs. Rogers had checked into the ward. Steve was beautiful, no matter if he was dolled up and red-lipped, or as he was now, face puffy from sleep and drool crusted at the corner of his mouth. _The circus,_ he mouthed, shining with the adventure of it all.

Bucky grinned – _The circus!_ \- and kissed the cold tip of Steve’s nose.

“Well, boys,” Fury rumbled, startling them out of their silent conversation. “It seems like my crew has hired you.” He shrugged one large shoulder, arms folded across the front of his black duster. “I guess we’d better feed you, then. Food’s through the back, coffee’s in the pot.” For the promise of coffee, Bucky would have joined for free. “And boys -” he smiled at them, and Bucky couldn’t tell if it was more unnerving than the man’s one-eyed glare “- welcome to Fury’s Fabulous Fantasies. Enjoy the show.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becky's brother leaves, one night, gone before she even understands what he's said. Of course it's Steve, who fixes what her family tried to break.

It’s two years, before the circus comes east again. Two years is a long time to miss your brother, when he’s there one morning and gone the next, and not a soul in Brooklyn seems to know where he went.

It takes Becca a month before she starts asking around, scared to open her mouth and disturb the funereal pall that’s settled over their home. Her mother weeps over the stove, over the sink, salt in the food and tears dripping like water off the clothes on the line; she crosses herself every time she passes the bar where Bucky and Steve had been arrested, as though Becca’s older brother had been dragged down to hell instead of disowned.

It takes another two months to canvass all of Brooklyn and part of Queens. Becca crosses over to the boys’ side of the schoolyard, begs for information that none of her brother’s old friends have to give. She tucks in her blouse and holds her head high and marches into the bar one night, and a pretty bartender in a blonde wig and two days scruff pats her hand and pours her a drink.

Luke doesn’t know anything, but he lets her clean the glasses and lends her heels nicer than she owns, listens to her ramble about dresses and muffs and fashion that a poor Irish secretary could never afford. It keeps her out of the house, the bar, away from her mother’s tears and the clink of her father’s bottle, the twins muttering nonsense in their own world. Becca feels like she hasn’t said a word for months, hasn’t sprawled over the fire escape and jabbered away with her brother mocking her fancy dreams, both of them talking like one day they’d all be true.

It’s a year to the day when she gets the letter. By then, Becca has marked out a corner of the cemetery, an overgrown corner near the place where they buried Mrs. Rogers, because she figures Steve would want to be next to his Ma. She brings flowers, when she can, even though there aren’t any bodies and she can’t afford a headstone and she doesn’t even know what she would tell the priest. “My brother’s dead and gone, I think, and maybe Steve too, and I know the Church don’t think much of queers but Steve loved his Ma, he did, and Bucky loved me.”

Luke comes, sometimes: brings a shot glass and a bottle of gin, and they pour two for themselves and two that soak into the soil and leave the cemetery reeking like the bar.

It’s Luke who gets the letter, hands it over one evening, unopened, addressed in neat letters to “Miss Rebecca Barnes, care of The Hourglass.” Mail from beyond the grave, the handwriting practiced in the way it was for a boy who’d always had trouble bending his fingers, his joints aching like they were already old.

_Dear Becca_ , it begins, the _B_ sloppy where it had started out as an _R_ , hesitating over her name. Becca’s family had been bigger, once, only a few people who called her Becca instead of Rebecca Barnes — her family had been complete, with her older brother and his best friend. 

_I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to write. First we were on the train, and I was sewing and painting and there wasn’t any spare time. I wrote you a letter in Topeka, posted it and everything, but apparently there was a flood and all the mail was lost. I didn’t find out about that until Carson City, or I would have written sooner. Then there was the winter flu, and you know how that is._

Steve’s annual ‘winter flu’ meant that he’d caught pneumonia and spent two weeks delirious with fever and coughing up bloody phlegm, but he’d always just shrugged and said that some people got hay fever and he got the flu.

_We’ve joined the circus_ , the letter continues, chatty and light-hearted, the way Steve’s voice went high when he wanted to pretend that it didn’t matter if a girl sneered at him and turned away. Like it didn’t matter, that he’d been afraid to call her “Becca,” the way he had since she was four. _ It’s amazing, Bec, you’ll have to come see. Bucky juggles and tumbles at the same time. He’s incredible. I sewed up his costume myself. I’ve made costumes for everyone, even Maria and her giant cats, and I help design the posters and hand out the tickets to the show. Maria keeps threatening to feed me to the tiger, but I think she’s kidding. (I wouldn’t make a meal regardless, I haven’t changed that much since we saw you last.) _

There’s an ink blot, where Steve kept the pen still for too long, smearing the ‘w’ on _we_. Becca’s breath catches in her chest, and Luke wraps an arm around her shoulders, pouring a man’s drink with his free hand.

~~_ He thinks _ ~~ , Steve had started, before going back and scratching out the words.  _ He doesn’t want you to _ – Steve didn’t bother crossing that out, just left it to linger on the page, the end of the sentence crashing shut like the last slam of a door.  _I wish you would write to him_ , Steve finally says. _It would mean a lot. We’ll be in Denver next, but Oklahoma City after that, and if you just address it to the post office I’ll be sure to check._

_Becca_ – And the ink runs to a stop again, uncertain like Steve never was. 

_~~I mi~~ _ _ We miss you. Take care of yourself, please, whether or not you ever _

_ Just take care. _

_ Love, Steve _

It’s another twelve months before she sees them — hands her ticket to a reedy man with curly hair and wire spectacles, watches Steve lure bystanders in with a flick of his wrist and the glittering sequins on his dress, claps when Bucky flips off of a man’s shoulders and flicks a knife dangerously close to a woman’s head — but by then Becca has a whole stack of letters that she keeps under the bar. It’s Bucky, who sends her the ticket to the show. And Becca might be two years older, might be more sophisticated and better dressed than the girl they left behind, but the giant black man is still calling for applause when she crashes onto the stage and hurtles into her big brother’s arms.


End file.
